The GENERAL CONTEXT of such use is:
social essence: If the degree of achievement and of technical proficiency actually required of the dominant social classes have no doubt never been higher, it nevertheless remains that such legitimation of such a social essence continues to stand in very close statistical relationship to social origins, to birth, that is, to ascription (see ascription). And, in societies which claim to recognize individuals only as equals in rights (human and otherwise, i.e. Western/American society), the educational system and its modern nobility only contribute to disguise, and thus legitimize, in a more subtle way, the arbitrariness (see arbitrariness) of the distribution of powers and privileges which perpetuates itself through the socially uneven allocation of school titles and degrees.